Children's Literary Practices in Communities

Children learn language from the day they are born. As they grow, their speech and language skills become increasingly complex. They learn to understand and use language to express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and to communicate.

Anthropologists Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin (1982)^[1] state,

 “…the primary concern of caregivers is to ensure that their children are able to display and understand behaviours appropriate to social situations. One of the major means by which this is accomplished is through language…

They continue,

“The process of acquiring language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a competent member of a society and the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized to a large extent through language …..”

During early speech and language development, children learn skills that are important to the development of literacy (reading and writing). Gradually children begin to recognise the written word/symbol as signifying something, they point out logos and street signs and they name some letters of the alphabet. Reading and writing skills develop together. Children learn about writing by seeing how the print in their homes, classrooms and communities provides information.

Sometimes what adults interpret as a written sign is not viewed as such by a not-yet-literate child, even though they “get the message”.  When I suggested lunch to a friend’s two year old he said “go to the place with chips outside”. After some questioning I realised he meant the MacDonald’s’ sign.  Up until that point I had never noticed that the M was made up of two chips (so fixed was I in the written word)!

Young children make numerous language discoveries as they play and interact with others. Language skills are primary avenues for cognitive development allowing children to talk about their experiences and discoveries in the community where they are being raised. Children learn the words to describe the concepts they meet and words that help them talk about past and future events. Just as with spoken language children must learn to sort through the available information about writing, in order to work out the principles underlying their home or community.

In Chapter Three^[2], Barbara Mayor introduces the subject of learning to write English and comments “I also consider what extra processes are involved in learning to crack the code of written language.”  I think her expression “crack the code” refers to that “click” moment when children realise that words “belong” to things and actions and written words can define that relationship.  A very good example of this “click” moment is when Helen Keller learns that water has a word to define it in the film, The Miracle Worker (1962). Surprisingly, for those who may not know the story, Helen Keller went blind and deaf in early infancy, yet she learned to become completely literate. Her “written” language was sign language, spelled out on her hand, but even through that limited medium she learned to fit into the society around her.  In fact this moment of the click is the pivotal point of the film where Helen moves from a near wild creature, outside of her society to a member of the society, through her understanding of the meanings words put on things.